Abstract. Recent DIII-D experiments in the ITER Baseline Scenario (IBS) have shown strong increases in fluctuations and correlated reduction of confinement associated with entering the electron-heating-dominated regime with strong electron cyclotron heating (ECH). The addition of 3.2 MW of 110 GHz EC power deposited at ~0.42 to IBS discharges with ~3 MW of neutral beam injection causes large increases in low-k and medium-k turbulent density fluctuations observed with Doppler backscatter (DBS), beam emission spectroscopy (BES) and phase-contrast imaging (PCI) diagnostics, correlated with decreases in the energy, particle, and momentum confinement times. Power balance calculations show the electron heat diffusivity e increases significantly in the mid-radius region 0.4< <0.8, which is roughly the same region where the DBS and BES diagnostics show the increases in turbulent density fluctuations. Confinement of angular momentum is also reduced during ECH. Studies with the TGYRO transport solver show that the model of turbulent transport embodied in the TGLF code quantitatively reproduces the measured transport in both the neutral beam (NB)-only and in the NB plus EC cases. A simple model of the decrease in toroidal rotation with EC power is set forth, which exhibits a bifurcation in the rotational state of the discharge.
The ITER Baseline Scenario on DIII-DProperties of discharges in the baseline operating scenario for ITER [ITER-similar shape, N~2 , q 95~3 , ELMing H-mode with H 98 (y,2)~1] are the subject of ongoing experiments on DIII-D; recent work has extended the similarities to include ITER-relevant (low) torque and T e /T i~1 (dominant electron heating). The aim of this work is to study confinement in the low rotation, dominant electron heating regime (as from alphas in a burning D-T plasma in ITER). The advantage of electron cyclotron heating as a principal heating tool for these studies is the fine control of the power deposition profile that is possible and the fact that all of the power goes to the electrons allows detailed study of the transport properties of the discharge.In this paper, we compare ITER Baseline Scenario (IBS) discharges with neutral beam (NB) heating alone with otherwise identical discharges in which some of the NB power is replaced with electron cyclotron heating (ECH) (110 GHz X2, radial launch, deposition at ~0.45). We examine the global confinement properties in the two cases, and analyze the radial profiles of diffusivities in both the electron and ion channels. Next, we carry out linear microstability analysis with the GS2 model to evaluate stability of ion temperature gradient (ITG) (long wavelength) and electron temperature gradient (ETG)/trapped electron modes (TEMs) (shorter wavelength), and compare the growth rates of the long wavelength modes with the measured shearing rates to estimate the effect of the E r shear on the ITG modes. Using the TGYRO nonlinear transport solver we evaluate the turbulent transport model embodied in the TGLF code, and find that the measured profi...